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The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 292: CHAP. 25. (23.)—EIGHTEEN VARIETIES OF THE CHESNUT.
By the Elder Pliny
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The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 25. (23.)—EIGHTEEN VARIETIES OF THE CHESNUT.

We give the name of nut, too, to the chesnut,1971 although it would seem more properly to belong to the acorn tribe. The chesnut has its armour of defence in a shell bristling with prickles like the hedge-hog, an envelope which in the acorn is only partially developed. It is really surprising, however, that Nature should have taken such pains thus to conceal an object of so little value. We sometimes find as many as three nuts beneath a single outer shell. The skin1972 of the nut is limp and flexible: there is a membrane, too, which lies next to the body of the fruit, and which, both in this and in the walnut, spoils the flavour if not taken off. Chesnuts are the most pleasant eating when roasted:1973 they are sometimes ground also, and are eaten by women when fasting for religious scruples,1974 as bearing some resemblance to bread. It is from Sardes1975 that the chesnut was first introduced, and hence it is that the Greeks have given it the name of the “Sardian acorn;” for the name “Dios balanon”1976 was given at a later period, after it had been considerably improved by cultivation.

At the present day there are numerous varieties of the chesnut. Those of Tarentum are a light food, and by no means difficult of digestion; they are of a flat shape. There is a rounder variety, known as the “balanitis;”1977 it is very easily peeled, and springs clean out of the shell, so to say, of its own accord. The Salarian1978 chesnut has a smooth outer shell, while that of Tarentum is not so easily handled.1979 The Corellian is more highly esteemed, as is the Etereian, which is an offshoot from it produced by a method upon which we shall have to enlarge when we come to speak of grafting.1980 This last has a red skin,1981 which causes it to be preferred to the three-cornered chesnut and our black common sorts, which are known as “coctivæ.”1982 Tarentum and Neapolis in Campania are the most esteemed localities for the chesnut: other kinds, again, are grown to feed pigs upon,1983 the skin of which is rough and folded inwards, so as to penetrate to the heart of the kernel.